New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched an unhinged rant Sunday against President-elect Donald Trump – claiming the nation was on the “eve of an authoritarian administration.”
The lefty lawmaker representing parts of Queens and the Bronx let loose during a series of Instagram videos in which she slammed TikTok for crediting Trump for the social media platform’s return after it was briefly offline in the United States this weekend.
“We are on the eve of an authoritarian administration,” the congresswoman said a day before Trump’s inauguration. “This is what 21st century fascism is starting to look like.”
Ocasio-Cortez questioned why TikTok was giving kudos to Trump considering he’s not yet president and is a “private citizen.”
“They are signaling that they are privately collaborating, they have agreed to privately collaborate with Donald Trump and the Trump administration,” she said, adding she believes TikTok is being used as a “propaganda tool for the right.”
TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance was given until Jan. 19 to either sell the platform’s US business or be banned from the country after Congress overwhelmingly approved the measure in April and was subsequently signed into law by President Biden over national security worries.
Trump has signaled he is willing to work with the company to keep TikTok online.
Ocasio-Cortez, who voted against the TikTok legislation, then argued every mass social media app “has been taken over by the right wing,” including X, owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk and Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram.
Meta founder, Mark Zuckerberg, discontinued fact-checking on his platforms this month, Ocasio-Cortez offered as a reason why Meta was now supporting the GOP.
Zuckerberg has also met with Trump in Florida and donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund.
The “Squad” member, who is starting her fourth term in office, then argued Republicans want to model themselves after Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been in power for more than a decade.
“And so you can look to see how Victor Orban runs Hungary to get a taste of how they will try to govern and control media and companies in the United States,” she claimed.
Orban has been criticized for dismantling his country’s democratic institutions while cracking down on judicial independence and critical media outlets.
Ocasio-Cortez also referred to Trump as a “rapist” Sunday a month after ABC News settled a lawsuit with the incoming president after its star anchor incorrectly said Trump was “found liable for rape” during a 2024 live broadcast.
“All these journalists are like ‘Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration, congresswoman are you going to inauguration, are you going to the inauguration?’” she said on another Instagram video.
“Let me make myself clear: I don’t celebrate rapists so no, I’m not going to the inauguration.”
She then doubled down on the incendiary remarks on X after a right-wing account blasted out the clip.
“Oh, are you triggered? Cry more,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos made the inaccurate on-air assertion that Trump was found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, leading to his network to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library as part of a legal settlement.
Trump sued ABC and the journalist days after the network aired the segment last year in which Stephanopoulos interviewed South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace and wrongly stated the verdicts in Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president.
The anchor said during a live “This Week” interview that Trump was “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape,” but neither verdict involved a finding of rape under New York law.
A New York court determined in 2023 that Trump was liable for sexual abuse over allegations that he abused Carroll at a department store in 1996 and later defamed her in his statements in which he denied her allegations.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and is appealing the ruling.
